Points of Interest 06/22/2011

Reads:

"My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor."

Bachmann and other GOPers may be using taxpayer money to support Tea Party activities.

The money came from the Members' taxpayer-funded office accounts, despite House rules prohibiting the use of these funds for political activities. Bachmann's office insists the expense was a proper use of official funds.

Whistling past the submerged graveyard.

According to the authors, we are "at high risk for entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history." It's not just about overfishing or marine pollution or even climate change. It's all of those destructive factors working cumulatively and occurring much more rapidly than scientists had expected.

9/11, for fun and profit.

And Grassfire Nation is a company -- not a political action committee devoted to promoting conservative causes or candidates. It is a division of an Iowa company, Grassroots Action, which calls itself "the leader in building custom conservative action networks for organizations seeking to expand their impact through the Internet" and in getting "results that reach your bottom line."

"But in an unusual mid-month note to his investors..."

...Gross hammered the “anti-Keynesians” in both parties who believe “that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth.” The truth, he says, is just the opposite. “Fiscal balance alone will not likely produce 20 million jobs over the next decade. The move towards it, in fact, if implemented too quickly, could stultify economic growth.”

Politifact's fact-checking rates a "false."

"CBO: We’ll only have giant deficits if Congress wants giant deficits."

If Congress passes laws extending the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the cost, repealing the Affordable Care Act and its cost controls and protecting doctors from Medicare cuts without making up the savings elsewhere — the “alternative fiscal scenario” — the national debt will be totally out of control...

Any clue why this isn't a bigger story?

Many of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables reveal the naked intervention by our ambassadorial staff in the business of foreign countries on behalf of US corporations. From mining companies in Peru to pharmaceutical companies in Ecuador, one WikiLeaks embassy cable after the next illuminates a pattern of US diplomats shilling for corporate interests abroad in the most underhanded and sleazy ways imaginable.

We need to legislate with the deficit we had in mind, not the deficit we wish we had.

To put it in budgetary terms, the deficit we imagine comes largely from discretionary spending. The one we have comes partly from discretionary spending but mostly from everything else: tax rates, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Senate kills job-creating bill.

But let’s be clear about what transpired yesterday: Republicans who’ve praised the Economic Development Administration for years voted in lock step to kill a measure that would have created jobs. They did so in part because they wanted to waste time on a bunch of irrelevant amendments and Harry Reid didn’t want to let them.

Watch:

How to build and utilize an echo chamber.



Consider:

If universal health care is good enough for soldiers, veterans, and prisoners, then why isn't it good enough for other Americans?